The company received an undisclosed amount of investment cash from Salesforce one year ago. Salesforce was a new investor, joining that round with BigMachines' existing backers Vista Equity Partners and JMI Equity.

Oracle has snatched BigMachines from the Salesforce camp to use against its one-time benefactor by filling out its cloud-based services. Last week it bought Compendium, a maker of online tools to create, target, promote and monitor marketing campaigns though channels such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

Oracle called BigMachines "an important addition" to its marketing, sales, social commerce and service clouds.

The move comes as revenues for Salesforce continue to grow, up 10 per cent in the company's first quarter and growing 31 per cent in the second quarter, reported 29 August, beating expectations.

Oracle, while it makes more money than Salesforce, has suffered two successive quarters of licence revenue misses. ®